La chaleur

It is officially hot season in the Extreme North, and it is officially hot. Like absurdly, ludicrously, hotter-than-ever-in-my-life hot. So hot that the candles in my house have melted and it feels like someone put all of my furniture into a giant microwave. So hot that I have to use potholders to pick up pots in my kitchen in the afternoon, even when I haven't used them for cooking, and life in the village stops between noon and four, because it's too hot to do anything but sleep. So hot that when I get home from school, I chug a liter and a half of water in a five minutes and am still thirsty. So hot that a Cameroonian friend of mine advised me recently to never leave the house without sunscreen, and then said, “even we feel like our skin is burning during hot season.” When Africans are worried about sunburns, you know it is really hot.

I don't have a thermometer, but judging from ones I've seen, the normal temperature in village in the afternoons is probably about 115-120. People say it could get up to as much as 130-140 next month, before the rains start in mid-April/May. You would think the rain would cool things off, but, as one of the nuns at the Catholic mission here described to me, actually “when the rain falls, it just brings up all the heat from the earth, and the ground steams and you think you are in Hell.” Something to look forward to.

When you greet people here, instead of just saying hello, now everyone also asks the question “Comment va la chaleur?” – “How's the heat?” There must be some correct response to this, but I have yet to figure out what it is, so I usually just say something like “Il fait vraiment chaud” – “It is truly hot”...which inevitably makes everyone laugh. In Mandara, the conversation goes like this:

Villager: Kar balaye? (How's it going/How was the night?)
Me: Balaye. (Fine)
Villager: Kakar avatiya? (How's the sun?)
Me: Avatiya umkwa. (There is sun.)
Villlager: Kakar dufire? (How's the heat?)
Me:Ankwa. (The French translation I got for this is “Ca me menace” – “It harasses me”. Pretty accurate).
Villager: Shagra. Use. (That's good. Thank you.)

Actually, a more accurate transcription of this dialogue would look like this:

Villager: Kar balaye?
Me: Balaye.
[copious amounts of Cameroonian laughter]
Villager: Kakar avatiya?
Me: Avatiya umkwa.
[more laughter, someone tells me once again that what I've said isn't correct and gives me yet another phrase to say]
Villlager: Kakar dufire?
Me:Ankwa.
[more laughter]
Villager (in French): Why don't you speak Mandara? You have to learn. Danielle [a volunteer who was here about four years ago] spoke fluent Mandara. Why don't you?

People here love to act like you are stupid if you don't speak whatever language they think you should speak, and always seem to have a story of some mythical volunteer who supposedly could speak fluently (these stories are usually less than accurate). Actually, on my optimistic days, I think that really they are just being nice, wanting us to speak their languages because they want us to be part of the community, which is really wonderful. But sometimes, when I get confronted with “Why don't you speak [Mandara, Fulfulde, Pidgin, Mafa, etc.]? [Name of former volunteer] was fluent!” it is on my way home from school in 115 degree heat, after a day of trying to convince my 90 sixth graders to conjugate a verb in the present continuous instead of shouting and throwing things at each other, and it is difficult not to be offended.

Sometimes I do feel like I'm making progress in Mandara. I've progressed past just being able to say “Hello, how are you?” to saying “I'm going to the market,” or “I'm coming home from school”. I've even begun experimenting with the words I've learned, to produce such eloquent phrases as “Sun, a lot!” or “Water, is there?” I've recently come to the realization, however, that no matter how I respond to someone in the village – whether it's in French or Fulfulde or Mandara or even English, whether my grammar and pronunciation are perfect or atrocious – there is a 90% chance that they will laugh in my face. And on my optimistic days, I tell myself that this is okay. It's probable that I am communicating something, and that they appreciate the effort...and at the very least, I am a source of endless entertainment for small children (okay, maybe not the smallest of children...they continue to scream, burst into tears, and flee at the sight of me...) and adults alike.